UGENT, DOCTORAL SCHOOL ARTS, HUMANITIES AND LAW: SPECIALIST COURSE
FIAT LEX: HISTORY—JURISPRUDENCE—ART
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY MASTERCLASS ON VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF LAW AND JUSTICE
Professor Desmond Manderson
University of Ghent, September 2014
It is a puzzle why we seem to turn a blind eye to how law is imagined, represented, and challenged in
other cultural forms. Very little attention has yet been paid, for example, to law as it is represented
or constituted in images. Law imagines itself to be resolutely hermetic, textual and linguistic. Yet our
cultures are saturated in the images and icons of art - privileged forms for the transmission and
interrogation of social and institutional norms for millennia. And visual media and mediations
increasingly dominate our experience in the 21st century. These seminars take a first step at
understanding important historical and conceptual aspects of law from just that point of view, with
an eye on both the historical origins and development of the representation of legal concepts, and
on the implications for these practices of representation in the contemporary world.
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SEMINAR OUTLINE
Wed 24 Sept.
8:30 – 9:00
LOCATION:
9:00 – 12:15
Morning coffee
Wielant zaal, Legal History Institute (C5 Wing, end of the corridor)
The cultural representation of law – introduction and methodology
LOCATION:
Blauwe zaal (sitemap: courtyard, C5 wing)
IMAGES:
Hammurabi’s Code (c. 1750 BCE)
Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)
Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, Allegory of the Civil Code (1832)
Gustav Klimt, Jurisprudence (1904)
Game Box, Six Days at Fallujah (2009)
READINGS:
Costas Douzinas, Law and the Image (University of Chicago Press, 1999), ch. 1
Peter Goodrich, ‘Visiocracy,’ (2013) 39 Critical Inquiry 498-531
13:30 – 16:45
LOCATION:
Thur 25 Sept.
8:30 – 9:00
LOCATION:
9:00 – 12:15
Workshop: Student research presentations and discussion
Pleitlokaal (sitemap: courtyard, D wing)
Morning coffee
Wielant zaal, Legal History Institute (C5 Wing, end of the corridor)
Justice, vision and sovereignty
LOCATION:
Pleitlokaal
IMAGES:
Albrecht Durer, Sol Justitiae (1499); and from Sebastien Brant, Ship of Fools
(1494)
Lucas Cranach, The Law and the Gospel (1529)
Pieter Brueghel, Justice from the Seven Virtues (1559)
Abraham Bosse/Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger, Ditchley Portrait (1592); Rainbow Portrait
(1601)
Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV (1701) and Chateau de Versailles
READINGS:
Louis Marin, Portrait of the King (University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 315, 206-14
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (MIT Press, 1985), chapters 1 and 3
13:30 – 15:30
LOCATION:
Excursion: Discussion and visit to Museum of Fine Arts Ghent with
Professors Martyn, Manderson, and participants
meeting at Faculty entrance, Universiteitstraat 4
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Fri. 26 Sept.
8:30 – 9:00
LOCATION:
9:00 – 12:15
Morning coffee
Wielant zaal, Legal History Institute (C5 Wing, end of the corridor)
Representing and representation: Colonialism, human rights, and the rule of law
LOCATION:
Pleitlokaal (sitemap: courtyard, D wing)
IMAGES:
Governor Arthur’s Proclamation (1828)
Ngurrara Canvas (1997)
JMW Turner, The Slave Ship (1840)
Rafael Cauduro, Murales, Suprema Corte de Justicia (2010)
READINGS:
Mieke Bal, ‘De-disciplining the Eye,’ (1990) 16 Critical inquiry 506-531
Kirsten Anker, ‘The Truth in Painting’, (2005) 9 Law Text Culture 91
Mon. 29 Sept.
19:00 – 20:30
Public Lecture: Klimt’s Jurisprudence: Sovereign Violence and the Rule of Law
LOCATION:
Auditorium B (sitemap: courtyard, B wing)
IMAGES:
Gustav Klimt, Jurisprudence (1904)
SUGGESTED READINGS:
Carl Schorske, Fin de Siecle Vienna (Vintage Books, 1982), chapter 5
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Penguin, 1992, 1900)
Aeschylus, Oresteia, trans., Richmond Lattimore (Univ. Chicago Press, 1969,
458 BC)
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TEACHERS’ BIO AND RESEARCH
Professor Desmond Manderson is an international leader in interdisciplinary scholarship in law and
the humanities. His work has led to essays, books, and lectures around the world in the fields of
English literature, philosophy, ethics, history, cultural studies, music, human geography, and
anthropology, as well as in law and legal theory. Throughout this work Manderson has defended
law's connection to these humanist disciplines is critical to its functioning, its justice, and its social
relevance. After ten years at McGill University in Montreal, where he held the Canada Research Chair
in Law and Discourse, and was founding Director of the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas,
he returned to Australia, where he is jointly appointed in the ANU College of Law and College of Arts
and Social Sciences at Australian National University. His current project, Fiat Lex, is on
representations of law and justice in the visual arts.
Professor Georges Martyn (born in Avelgem, Belgium, 1966) studied Law (1984-89) and Medieval
Studies (1989-91) in Leuven (Belgium) and obtained a Ph.D. degree in Law at the Catholic University
of Leuven in 1996, with a dissertation on private law legislation in the early modern Netherlands. He
has been an ‘advocaat’ (barrister/lawyer) between 1992 and 2008 at the bar of Kortrijk, is now
honorary member of the Ghent bar, and is a substitute justice of the peace in Kortrijk since 1999. He
is full professor at the University of Ghent (Department of Jurisprudence and Legal History) since
1999 and leads the Institute of Legal History (www.rechtsgeschiedenis.be) since 2010. He teaches
‘History of Politics and Public Law’, ‘General Introduction to Belgian Law’ and ‘Legal Methodology’.
His publications deal with the history of private law and legal institutions in the Netherlands in the
early modern era, the reception of Roman law, the legal professions, the evolution of the sources of
the law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and legal iconography. He was appointed by royal
decree as a member of the Belgian Royal Commission for the Edition of the Old Law
(http://justitie.belgium.be/nl/informatie/bibliotheek/koninklijke_commissie_uitgave_belgische_oud
e_wetten_en_verordeningen/), he is the Flemish editor-in-chief of the Belgian-Dutch legal history
review Pro Memorie (http://www.verloren.nl/pro-memorie) and co-editor of the series Studies in the
History of Law and Justice (http://www.springer.com/series/11794).
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Georges Martyn, Ghent University, Department of Law, Institute for Legal History [organizer]
Serge Dauchy, Centre d’Histoire Judiciaire (Lille 2)/USL-Bruxelles
Bruno De Wever, Ghent University, Department of History
Dirk Heirbaut, Ghent University, Department of Law, Institute for Legal History
Nathalie Tousignant, USL-Bruxelles
Xavier Rousseau, UCL
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PRACTICAL INFORMATION
TARGET GROUP:
We welcome PhD-students with ongoing research in (art) history, law, philosophy or other
fields on the crossroads of law, politics, semiotics, art, iconography and/or history.
Participants will be asked to give a short presentation of their own research with a case on
law & the visual, as well as a presentation on a work of art in the museum, for which they
will receive background information. For each of the three morning sessions, participants are
asked to read two texts (the other texts are suggested readings). The study material will be
made possible via Zephyr after registration. The masterclass will be held entirely in English.
REGISTRATION:
* UGent Doctoral School AHL members: To register or to add your name to the waiting list,
send an e-mail to [email protected], mentioning your name, first name, student
number, Doctoral School and Department. Your registration will be confirmed by e-mail.
* non-UGent PhD students: To register or to add your name to the waiting list, send an email to [email protected], mentioning your name, first name, present occupation,
the languages you read and a brief description of your current research, as well as 1 or 2 of
your relevant publications. You will get a reply by e-mail.
This masterclass is organized with the kind support of the Doctoral Schools UGent and the Belspo IAP Justice
and populations.
SITE MAP: UGENT LAW FACULTY UNIVERSITEITSTRAAT 4 , 9000 GENT, BELGIUM
W I EL A NT Z A AL
T R AM L IN E 1 : ST OP ‘ K OR T E M E ER ’
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